


Promises to Keep

by odetteandodile



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), De-Serumed Steve Rogers, Endgame fixit, Love Confessions, M/M, Pure catharsis here, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers deals with his trauma, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, at least a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odetteandodile/pseuds/odetteandodile
Summary: In his life, Steve has made four promises he wishes he'd been able to fulfill.Returning the stones, he finds himself with the time and means to revisit them.(My Endgame fixit, and what I needed Steve Rogers to hear and say if he got the chance to go back in time. And what I hoped for him when he came back again.)





	Promises to Keep

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, such as they are! 
> 
> I wrote this fic partially inspired by [this soft art](https://twitter.com/Neutralchaos1/status/1126630578101506048) that I requested from the excellent [neutralchaos](https://twitter.com/Neutralchaos1)! I wasn't really thinking I would end up doing a fixit of my own, but then I started thinking about this story and I decided it was worth it. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!

Bucky goes through the motions, as Steve says goodbye to him and Sam in front of the platform. He has to. 

He knows all his lines, luckily. Where he’s meant to say _you’re taking all the stupid with you_ , though even as he says it, trying to keep his face a mask of neutrality and send Steve off with a smile, he knows it doesn’t come out quite right. It’s not convincing. 

Just like the first time they did this, he doesn’t think either of them will be the same when they see each other again. _If_ they see each other again. 

He can’t say, exactly, how he knows. Maybe only by virtue of the fact that Steve has never been able to lie to him successfully, even by omission. Not when he has to look him in the face. The only times in their lives Steve really managed to surprise him were extenuating circumstances—Bucky on another continent on the front lines of a terrible war, and Bucky shaking off what turned out to be many decades of brainwashing in the shock of seeing Steve again in this new century. 

So he knows. He doesn’t know what exactly, but he knows Steve has something else going on behind his calm demeanor than just the effort to return the six stones to their locations. This last, final battle and the five years that came before have changed him. He wears them even more heavily than he’s worn anything that came before. Bucky can _feel_ the sorrow and regret radiating off of him, even as he does as Steve always does and stays strong and collected for everyone else’s sake.

But Steve didn’t come to him, didn’t tell him himself. So Bucky chooses not to ask. 

He lets him go. 

When the five seconds pass, and Steve doesn’t appear again on the platform, Sam and Banner panic—but Bucky isn’t surprised. 

He turns away. 

***

Steve returns the first three stones quicker than he’d feared: one to Camp Lehigh, because he knows exactly where it was going. One to Morag, because it’s simple. And one to Asgard, because it’s distasteful (though easy, with Jane asleep) and a little sad, too, to linger in this beautiful place knowing it no longer exists for Thor to return to. 

And Steve always knew which he’d be dealing with last—after he does what he needs to do and can close the loop entirely. So he heads next to New York. The scepter is a little trickier, with so many people now crowding the scene including _two_ versions of himself, Tony, and Bruce amongst the already chaotic site of the recent battle. But he manages it. 

He’s wary, when he steps onto the rooftop of Dr. Strange’s apartment. Bruce had shared a little of his disconcerting encounter with the Ancient One, and Steve’s not certain he’s keen on repeating it. Still, it’s not like he can just leave the stone on the doorstep with a note. 

Steve waits behind the maintenance shed, listening to the last strains of Bruce’s conversation. He can see the back of the Sorcerer Supreme, her odd robes, and can hear her strangely serene voice. It makes him feel a little on edge. 

She places the green stone into Bruce’s large palm. And then Bruce is gone. 

“You can come out now, Steve,” she says, not bothering to turn around. Steve clenches his jaw and steps out from behind the building, feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar even if he’s only doing exactly what she requested. 

But she turns to him with a smile, which makes him feel a little better, and holds out a slender hand to him. 

“You are successful then. I’m extremely glad of it.” She says, as Steve reaches out to shake her hand. It feels weird, shaking hands with her. Like something she’s doing to try to put him at ease rather than a normal gesture. And her eyes bore into him. 

“Yeah, we managed it,” he says, tone a little clipped. “Here to deliver this back to you and close the gaps, as requested.” 

She gives him another long, measuring look. “And you’ve already been quite successful in that endeavor too, I see.” She pauses. “Though I think the little bit you have left of your journey will be much harder than what you have accomplished so far.” 

“This is the second to last, only one more to return,” Steve says, hedging, and trying not to look shifty. 

It doesn’t matter. She smiles knowingly. “But we both know what you have ahead of you isn’t just the final stone.”

“I—” Steve swallows, guiltily. “Bruce said going back won’t change it. I figured I can’t hurt anything.” 

“It’s true, you can’t change what happened,” she agrees. “Hurt anything? That’s an entirely different question, so long as we assume that you include yourself in the premise. Are you sure that it will help you? To see, or to speak, but not to be able to change them?”

Steve takes a deep breath, preparing himself to deny what she’s saying. But he takes another look at the wry, almost challenging expression on her face and he lets it out in an aggrieved sigh. 

“I think—I have to.”

She nods. “I understand. I just want you to know that it may be harder than you expect, not to be able to act.” 

“Will they—will they be too upset, to see me?” Steve asks, voicing the fear that he’s pushed down since he decided on what he wanted to do. “Is it selfish? To go to them?” 

The sorceress holds his gaze, searching his eyes again. “Selfish? I don’t know. They won’t remember. Your visit will linger with them only a little while, once you leave. It will be something like a wound, healing up and closing around you, resetting things to the past that you already know. So I suppose it _is_ selfish in some sense, in that it does nothing for _them_. Only for you. But I don’t think it is selfish in the way that you mean—a reason to withhold what you need from yourself just because you’re the only one who will benefit from it.” She smiles. “And you are being very efficient in arranging your selfish errand in the midst of an unselfish one, returning the stones and setting things right. I don’t think anyone would begrudge you the detour. Not me, certainly—though I don’t imagine that you were seeking my approval.”

Steve laughs a little, surprised, and looks away over the New York skyline, still smoldering. “No, I guess I wasn’t. But I don’t want to hurt anybody either.”

“No, I know well that you would not. Steve, look at me,” she commands, and Steve is powerless to resist the pull of her eyes—dark and fathomless. Not unkind, but not without danger to them either. She lifts a long-fingered hand and places it on his cheek. “You seek four. Three you may speak with—and do what you must—with the knowledge that all will be as it was before, once you’ve gone. It will be a gift and a curse for you to know this, I think.” She cocks her head, pausing. “Yes, the third especially will be hard. You’ll want to change it, and you can’t. Whatever you do there _will_ be reset by the closing of the loop. But it means that you can speak as freely as you must.” 

Steve clears his throat. “And—and the fourth?” 

“Mmm.” The sorceress hums in her throat, considering. “I know a great deal, Steve Rogers. But when it comes to the stones, even I can’t be certain. It takes something that powerful to change the flow of time. That’s why you’re here. But it means that I can’t See what will be there. It might be enough, I don’t know.”

Steve nods, slowly. “Okay.” 

She pulls away her hand from his face, and resets her expression to something more businesslike. 

“Well, in that case you have things to do. I’ll have mine back, and you can be on your way.” 

***

There’s few lights on in the compound when Steve’s feet hit the dirt between two of the barracks tents. Somewhere in one of them he himself is lying in a cot, not yet asleep but contemplating what tomorrow will bring for him—he has no idea, Steve thinks. He edges around the barracks tents toward the buildings that house the officer’s quarters, and sees the soft glow of a light in the window he’s looking for. It’s easy enough to avoid the pair of M.P.’s patrolling within the compound, slipping between the shadows and letting himself up the back stairs. He doesn’t bother to knock. 

Erskine regards him with bemusement, and the glassy eyed calm of someone who has knocked back a couple glasses of potent schnapps already this evening. 

Steve’s chest constricts painfully at the sight of him. It’s been so long—and yet almost like no time at all. Maybe that’s thanks to his enhanced memory, but he thinks that Erskine’s sincere face and kind eyes would have been something he committed there no matter what. 

He looks Steve up and down. Then he turns to the desk and pulls the other tumbler toward himself, and sloshes a healthy amount of the clear liquid into it. He stretches his hand out, offering it to Steve. 

“I don’t know if I should be very worried or very pleased about whatever this is,” he says in his soft, lilting accent. 

Steve’s shoulders sag a little, and he laughs wryly. “I don’t know either.” 

“Well you don’t need a procedure tomorrow anyway,” Erskine says, corner of his mouth tipping up. “So you’d better have a drink before you tell me.” 

Steve’s throat tightens, and he nods, stepping into the room to sit across from Erskine’s desk chair on the tidily made bed and accepting the tumbler of schnapps. 

He peers into it, swirling the clear liquor for a moment against the sides of the glass. He’s not sure what he was thinking—or why he thought this would be easier. It’s not. He should have practiced a speech or something. 

“Steven,” Erskine says, “you’d better spit it out or I’m going to assume I’ve had too much schnapps and that I’d better go to sleep. And I warn you I snore quite forcefully.” 

Steve shakes himself. Erskine is handling this better than Steve is and he doesn’t even have any idea what the fuck is going on. 

“I’m from…a lot of years from now.” Steve begins. Erskine’s eyebrows shoot up, but he nods and takes a sip of his schnapps, and Steve does the same. The liquor burns clean straight down to his stomach, like it’s clearing the way for his words. “The test—your test tomorrow. It works. On me. But then it doesn’t—there’s no army. It’s—it’s _just_ me—Hydra—”

Erskine holds up his hand, stopping Steve. “I don’t think you should tell me, Steven. But I can guess. That isn’t why you’re here though, is it?” 

Steve shakes his head, throat growing thick again. He takes another burning sip of schnapps. “I made you a promise, a long time ago.” He pauses. “Well, a long time ago for me. You asked me to promise that I’d stay a good man.” 

Erskine smiles ruefully, and looks down, pushing at the bridge of his glasses on his nose. “And have you?” 

Tears prickle at the corners of Steve’s eyes. “I don’t know. The future, it’s—there’s a lot more fights than I knew I was signing up for. And I don’t know—” He looks up, meeting Erskine’s eyes, and tries to keep the choked, pleading note out of his voice. “When can I stop?” 

Erskine sighs heavily. “Hitler? Hydra?” 

Steve bites the inside of his cheek. “I—we stopped Hydra. Won the war. But then after that things got…complicated. I just—you gave me this for a reason, to help people. And there aren’t any more of me.” 

Erskine swears softly in German, rubbing at his eyes. “We won?” 

Steve nods, swallowing. “Yeah. And a few more times after that.” 

“And you’re still doing this because I asked you to remember the value of strength?”

“Yeah. And because—because there’s nobody else to take my place.” 

Erskine lets out a long hiss of breath. “Steven, god help you. You are a good man. But you’re pigheaded and— _scheisse_ —this thing I made really did amplify all of you, didn’t it? You never knew when to stop. I should have known that part would be hard for you—you would’ve kept trying to enlist until the war was over. Of course it made you into this—this super man who is still trying to do it after it was won.” 

“I feel like—like I owe it to you.” 

Erskine makes a disbelieving sound, waving his hand. “What you owe to _me_? Whatever happened—happens tomorrow—it sounds like it’s me who fails _you_.” 

Steve’s mouth drops open to protest, but Erskine stops him again. 

“You aren’t supposed to be the only one, _Steven_ , you’re supposed to be the first! All of this was meant to make an army of men like you, working _together_ to do this thing. You were never supposed to carry it all on your own.” Erskine looks at him seriously over the top of his glasses, deep lines around his eyes wrinkling in concern. “To know that you did—it’s beyond anything I could have asked you for. To bear this burden alone. That is more than I would have asked of any good man—or even a perfect soldier.” 

The words sink into Steve’s skin like water on sand, cool relief. But he can’t help whisper, “You gave me a gift.” 

Erskine smiles kindly, and reaches out for the first time, clasping his shoulder. “I think I must have given you a terrible burden, too. For you to have crossed time to ask me this. You’re a better man than I knew even half an hour ago, I think.” His eyes glint with a little of the sparkle Steve remembers so well. “It is gratifying to me, to have been even righter than I was aware. I am a vain enough man to enjoy when my hypotheses are proven correct.” 

Steve’s hand shakes a little as he lifts the glass to his lips again. He clears his throat. “This is as good as you made it sound.” 

Erskine gives him another smile, this time a sad one, maybe reading some of the things Steve has left unsaid. But he lifts his glass, and Steve lifts his too so that they can clink them together in a quite toast. 

“Then I’m glad to share it with you.” Erskine says, and he holds Steve’s eyes a moment longer over the rim. “To a war won—and to you, who I hope can now experience the goodness of peace. That’s what this was all for.” 

Steve takes in a weak breath, and drinks to the toast. “Thank you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.” 

Erskine downs the remaining contents of his glass, setting it down on the desk with an unsteady thunk. He rises to his feet, swaying a little, and Steve does too. 

He’s surprised when Erskine pulls him into a tight hug. 

“You’re the best of us, Steven,” he says, a little muffled in Steve’s shoulder, but Steve tips his head down to catch it. “And the best of me. Even if it’s the last thing I do, you have nothing to be sorry for. I’m proud to have known you.” 

Steve pulls away from the hug, gently, bracing Erskine with one arm as he sways again. There are tears in the other’s man’s eyes as Steve helps the scientist sit on the edge of his cot, and Erskine lays down, eyes drifting shut. 

Steve makes sure he gets his feet all the way up, and carefully removes the man’s skewed glasses, folding them onto the bedside table. 

He holds his own tears back until he slips out into the darkness of the compound, lifting his wrist to program in his next stop as soon as his eyes are clear enough to see the screen. 

***

It takes him a little while to find the right spot when he lands again, even with the address. First it’s not because he’s entirely sure it’s a true, accurate one, and second because he lands in the bright sunlight of a California afternoon and he doesn’t particularly want to be seen. 

At least, Steve hopes nobody spots him slinking around the little bungalow. Otherwise he has no doubt he’ll be having to make his retreat amidst a group of whatever very confused policemen answer that call about a strange man lurking. 

The front of the house is unremarkable, which is what has him unconvinced at first that this wasn’t just a cover address after all, even though he’d found it in official SHIELD files. 

But as soon as he gets around back he relaxes. The front might be all Los Angeles suburbia, but the back tells him he’s in the right place. 

There’s a set of tumbling mats sheltered under the portico where other homeowners would put their Jacuzzi or their herb garden, and a series of sandbags and training equipment hanging from the rafters at intervals. 

Steve makes his way around them fondly, letting his fingers linger on a pair of red sunglasses sitting next to a half-drunk glass of iced tea on a table. 

He’s just making his way to the back door, thinking that he _will_ knock this time rather than surprise her—when a voice behind him and the sound of a pistol cocking wipes the thought from his head. 

“Hands where I can see them, and turn slowly please,” says the crisp British accent. 

Steve takes in a deep breath, and does as he’s told, turning slowly on the spot, hands raised. 

“Peggy,” he says, “It’s me.” 

Peggy stares back at him for a beat, gun steady in her hand. 

Then she steps forward and punches him squarely in the face. 

 

Peggy, maybe by virtue of not being drunk or maybe just because she is who she is, requires much more explanation of Steve’s sudden reappearance than Erskine had, before she is willing to relinquish the threat of the pistol still in her hand. 

But after answering all of the questions he can to convince her—the exact year he’s from, a brief synopsis of time travel (he had to fudge that one a bit since he still doesn’t actually get the whole theory himself, just understands how the mechanics work enough to do it), and details of his life before the war to satisfy her that he is who he claims—Peggy fetches a second glass of iced tea from the little house, and puts the gun out of sight. 

She dons the red sunglasses too, and Steve doesn’t comment on the fact that they hide the tears glistening in her eyes as she finally believes that he’s really here. They sit side by side in a pair of lawn chairs looking out over the boxing equipment and pink yard flamingos in the grass beyond. 

“You’re not dead then,” Peggy says, after a few moments sipping tea. “Or now, I mean. In this time.” 

“Nope. Just asleep, I guess, on ice out there somewhere.” 

“Hmm.” Peggy says, and Steve can almost see her mind whirring over all of the information. 

“I don’t think—you won’t remember this, after I leave Peg. I’ve gotta stay out there a while yet.” 

She throws him a sharp look. “No changing it?” 

He shakes his head, and Peggy purses her lips. 

“Then what are you here for?” Steve’s shoulders tense at the question, one he’s been asking himself and doesn’t have a good answer to. But Peggy’s face softens a little. “I mean—if we can’t change it, and I won’t remember, what do you need from me? Why have you come? You aren’t—” she hesitates, “staying?” 

Steve ducks his head. “I don’t think I could do that. I dunno, maybe I could but—”

“But you can’t,” she agrees, nodding. 

Steve sighs. “I just needed to talk to you. There’s nobody—nobody who knows me quite like you do.” 

To Steve’s surprise, Peggy laughs at that. “I think you and I both know that’s not true, but go on then.” 

Steve bypasses that for now, though he knows exactly who she means. He just didn’t know she knew. 

“I’m sorry I missed our dance, Peg. Sorry I couldn’t keep my promise.” 

Peggy hums, but doesn’t answer right away. She leans back in her chair and takes off the sunglasses, so that Steve can see her keen gaze on his face and feel the full power of it pinning him down while she decides how she wants to respond. 

Steve’s eyes linger on the lovely, strong lines of her face, the corner of her red mouth tipped up as she observes him, and he thinks about how much he’d missed this—missed her—since she passed. She’d never let him get away with anything, and he has a feeling that he needs to hear whatever she’s about to say just as much as he knows he’s not going to like it. 

She makes him wait for it. Or maybe she really is trying to decide what to say. She reaches for a gold cigarette holder on the table between them, and lights a smoke. After a long drag she taps the ashes out in the tray beside her, and looks at him again, thoughtful. 

“Do you know what I’ve thought of at least a thousand times since you—crashed?” She asks, and Steve can hear her replace the word _died_ at the end of it. He shakes his head. “I’ve thought about what I said to you in that pub, after—after Barnes fell from that train. About giving him the dignity of his choice.” She takes another drag of the cigarette, and then stubs it out beside her, leaving the lipstick smudged butt smoking weakly in the tray. “And I’ve thought about how you used those words against me. On that last call. I’ve been angry with you frequently over it, when I wasn’t missing you.” 

Steve looks down, jaw clenched, at the sweating glass in his hands. 

“But you were right,” she says, and he looks up again. This time Peggy looks away. “It was your choice. I’ve gone over it and over it—and I kept thinking _we could have landed that plane_. If you’d let us try. It took me a long time to realize you didn’t want to.” 

“I—Peggy, I didn’t—” Steve fumbles, a little taken aback. 

Peggy shakes her head, smiling a little. “It’s alright, Steve. Maybe even you didn’t know it at the time, that you were choosing. And asking me to let you.” 

“I…didn’t. I didn’t mean to, like that.” Steve thinks over those frantic last moments in the Valkyrie. _Had_ he really thought there was no other way? He can’t remember thinking much about it at all. He’d just _done_. But he does remember the night in the pub after he’d lost Bucky, with fresh, painful clarity. He’s had a lot of reasons to resurrect that particular memory in the last five years, reliving it side by side with the ones on the helicarrier, the bridge, the cryochamber, the battlefield in Wakanda.

“It was inevitable, I think, for you to follow him,” she says. “We might have had our dance, if none of the rest had happened. But I think that’s all we would have had. Don’t you?” 

“I don’t know,” Steve whispers, truthfully. 

Peggy chews at her bright red bottom lip, thinking. 

Steve watches her for a moment, hands clenched so tight around the glass in his hands he’s suddenly afraid it might crack under the strain. Then he blurts, almost against his own will, “He wasn’t dead. He—he lived too.” 

Peggy’s eyes flick to his, sharp and dark again. “But?” 

“But what?” Steve asks in confusion. 

“There has to be a but, Steve. Or else why would you be here?”

There’s a truth to that that Steve hadn’t intended to examine closely. “But it was bad—for him. For a long time. And it’s been…the future isn’t exactly easy.” 

Peggy snorts eloquently. “Neither is the past, or the present either. You never made anything easy for yourself a day in your life.” 

Steve chuckles weakly. “Yeah, guess you’re right about that.” 

“You ought to find a way to stop that, Captain Rogers.” 

Steve smiles, but it feels stiff to him so he knows it’s not coming across right. Peggy smiles back, sadly. 

“Yeah I probably should. But it’s a hard habit to break. Like making promises I can’t keep, I guess.” 

Peggy sets her glass down, and reaches out to lift Steve’s from his hands to set aside as well. She pulls one of his across the space between them, clasping it in hers. 

“Is it so hard to choose something that will make you happy, after all this time?” 

“Are you happy, Peggy? Now?” He asks, deflecting. Or maybe hoping her answer will shed a little light for him. 

Peggy smiles again, and this time it’s a real one, thinking of some private thing as she glances back at the house. Steve knows all the dates on the timeline of her life, memorized them from her file when he first arrived in the twenty-first century, adrift. She isn’t married yet, he knows, but the look on her face tells him that she’s already met him—the man who _will_ make her happy for the next fifty years. It softens something inside him in a way that the black and white facts on a page of paper couldn’t. Or even having heard her talk about him in a public way in those old interviews. This is something more personal, he can _feel_ her contentment. 

She looks back at him again with a soft, open expression, and says simply, “I am.” 

Steve clears his throat, unable to look away though he knows his own expression is probably saying too much at the moment. He squeezes her hand. “Good.” 

Peggy takes in a deep breath, then settles herself back into her usual mien of commanding confidence. 

“Right, well. I’m going to forgive you the slight tardiness of the appointment—and we will have our dance.” She gives a smile just for him this time, cheeks dimpling. “But in exchange for you discharging this promise to me in the most dramatic and ridiculous way imaginable,” she says, a hint of laughter in her voice, “I want you to make me a new one. One you’ll keep, and on time.” 

Steve lets out a soft huff, chest soaring with fondness. He needed this from her—more than what he’d known he was looking for when he made this ill-formulated plan in his head. 

“And what’s that?” 

Peggy stands, pulling him up from his chair. “That when you go home, you finally learn how to stop thinking you’re not good enough—for me, or anyone else. And definitely that you stop thinking you aren’t good enough to find some happiness.”

Steve promises. 

They have their dance. 

***

He wasn’t sure, after all, if he would have the courage to make this stop. 

Especially after speaking to the Ancient One, and confirming that there’s nothing he can really do. She was right, at least, to point out that he might just be hurting himself with all of this. Talking to Erskine and Peggy was both harder and better than he’d imagined. 

Steve’s not sure he wants to know what he might learn here. 

But in the end, as he stands on Peggy’s lawn and lifts his wrist to determine his next destination, he can’t resist. He’s never been able to resist this one, particular pull. 

He sets himself down a little early, to have a moment to regain his composure. The train rocks and sways around him, a low thrumming under his boots as he crouches between storage crates. Just the smell of it, the chill in the air is enough to stop his breath. He’s spent so many nightmares here since this day. Steve can’t remember if he dreamed while he was on the ice. But he thinks if he did he must have spent many of those seventy long years of sleep standing in the icy door of this train. 

His racing heart ticks down the minutes of waiting. He’d thought he’d prepared himself, but he realizes that was too optimistic. There’s no way to prepare for this. Aside from the lifetime he’s spent wanting it, he supposes. 

He thinks about what Peggy had said, about how crashing the plane had been his choice, his first choice even when there may have been an option in which he lived. She was only half right. Thinking back to his desperation alone in that wrecked pub, he knows his _first_ choice had been this—going back and undoing what had been done. Getting Bucky back. Crashing the plane with himself in it was his second. 

And now he’s here. 

The sorceress had been right too though—knowing that even after he does this it won’t change things for Bucky is a knife under his ribs. But he still needs it. _This_ is his truly selfish act. To find out just for himself what it would have felt like to catch him. 

Steve’s enhanced hearing lets him know when three pairs of boots hit the top of the train a few cars down. 

It’s easy enough, now that he’s had experience fighting himself, and this self is even younger and more inexperienced than the last one he took on. The door between the compartments shuts, separating his past self from Bucky. Steve lets himself take down the Hydra goon before he springs from his hiding place, armed this time to quietly stun the other Steve and prop him up in a corner. It hadn’t been exactly fun helping Bruce get the settings on the thing strong enough to subdue him, but it’s worth it now as he plucks the shield from his other, unconscious form. 

He sees Bucky’s gun jam, opens the train door and tosses him his sidearm. 

“I had him on the ropes,” Bucky says after the Hydra agent is down. 

“I know you did,” Steve replies, voice feeling a little weak. 

Out of the corner of his eye he watches for the hidden figure he knows is waiting to jump them, and lets it happen. 

It all plays out exactly as he remembers—the shield, Bucky lifting it, the blast. The difference now is that he has much better weapons than a revolver, and he puts the soldier down in an instant without a struggle, leaping for the train door where Bucky hangs much faster than he’d managed the first time. He doesn’t hesitate this time either to throw himself out of the opening, clinging with one hand on the iron bar of the door and stretching the other toward Bucky—

“Bucky! Grab my hand!” 

Bucky’s face is twisted in fear and concentration, and he relinquishes his grasp on the door one handed, reaching out for Steve and—

Steve’s hand wraps in a viselike grip around Bucky’s, just as the metal he’d been hanging on rips away with an ugly screech. The bar falls, down and down and down into the ravine below. 

Steve swings Bucky’s body up into the train, hurling him into the car with all the momentum and strength he can muster. 

Then he clambers back off of the door himself, hitting the floor and rolling back in with a thud. His heart pounds. _That’s what it could have felt like_. 

“Jesus Steve, are you okay?” Bucky gasps, crouching over him and rolling Steve over with a frantic expression. 

Bucky’s worried about him, if _he’s_ okay. Steve can’t help how his face crumples. 

“Sit up buddy, you’re okay—I’m okay, we gotta—still gotta find Zola right? Let’s—”

Steve sits up and reaches out for Bucky’s shoulders, holding them tight and just drinking his fill of Bucky’s face. For a moment, Bucky looks confused. Then Steve’s sees as his expression shifts, looking down at Steve’s incorrect uniform, his face that he knows has lines Bucky won’t recognize. Bucky’s body goes very still, his hand creeping toward the sidearm that’s no longer in its holster. 

“Steve what the hell—you’re not—”

Steve shakes his head, trying to gather himself for an explanation. Instead his words come out in a cracked near-sob. 

“Bucky I’m so sorry—I’m sorry I couldn’t—I told you I’d always be there, you should’ve gone home, I should’ve let you—”

Bucky takes a few strained breaths through his nose, staring at Steve. Then he lets the rigid lines of his body relax, and he sinks down slowly to sit beside Steve against the wall of the train compartment. 

“What is happening Steve?” He asks, voice calm. And Steve’s shoulders slump again at the trust in the question, that Bucky knows something is wrong but that even now he doesn’t suspect that it’s _Steve_ , Steve who could be the wrong part of the equation. 

“I’m not—it’s me Buck,” Steve says, “but I’m not—I’m here from the future. I’m not me I’m…I’m me from a long time from now.” 

Steve watches Bucky’s jaw working. “Okay.” He says, finally. Simply. “What went wrong?” 

Steve’s eyes dart toward the still open compartment door. “Everything.” 

“So you came back to—to fix it?” Bucky asks. Then he gives a small shake of his head, and the corner of his mouth curls. “Goddamn. Time travel. Thought I was the one who bought into all that science fiction.” 

“Yeah,” Steve chuckles, weakly. “Yeah you were. We’re the science fiction now I guess. Didn’t see that coming.” 

Bucky nods, and chews on his lip. “What happened to my Steve? Is he okay?” 

“Oh, uh—” Steve stammers, feeling himself blush. Bucky’s curl of a smirk grows and Steve ducks his head. “He’s fine. In the other compartment. He’ll come around soon I just—I needed to be here.” 

Bucky’s expression darkens. “Steve,” he shoots a glance at the mountains now whipping past them. “Am I—am I there, too, where—when you are?” 

Steve takes in a shuddering breath. “Yeah. But—but it’s bad. For us. For a long time. You especially.” His face twists again and his eyes feel hot. “I’m so sorry Bucky. For all of it.” 

“Is it your fault?” 

Steve nods. “I should’ve—I didn’t know. But yeah. I think it is.” 

Bucky lets out a long breath, and lets his head fall back with a thunk against the wall, propping his knees up. “Well, you would. You’re an unreliable narrator, Rogers.”

Steve gives a watery laugh at that, and Bucky shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye. 

“You here to fix it?” 

Steve clenches his jaw, biting hard into his cheek, and shakes his head. “No. I can’t change anything. And you’ll forget I was here too.” 

Bucky nods slowly. “So all the stuff you think is your fault, it’ll happen anyway.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, voice very small. 

“But we—we’re together? At least?” 

Steve ducks his head, involuntarily hunching his shoulders. 

“I—I’m not really sure. There’s been so much…so much water under the bridge, Buck. I think you might need to be away from me for a little while.” 

Bucky snorts softly. “Still dancing to that old tune huh?” 

Steve’s head jerks with the reaction to stare at Bucky. “What do you mean?” 

Bucky smiles wearily, looking at his hands clasped and dangling between his knees. “I mean I can’t believe we figured out time travel before we managed to get our heads out of our asses about each other.” He glances at Steve again through the long fringe of his lashes. “I always sorta hoped—after the war maybe, when we weren’t running down fights with Hydra every other day…maybe we’d have a moment long enough to figure it out.” Bucky lifts his head, eyes going distant on the world rushing by the train. “Had a whole lot of speeches practiced about it. Sounds like I never got around to giving you any of them. I’m sorry for that.”

“Bucky, _don’t_ —” Steve begs, unable to help himself. “Don’t apologize to me, you have no idea—”

Bucky shakes his head, turning to Steve again with a wistful expression. “No, guess I don’t. But I don’t have to know what happens to us, you dumb punk. I know he still wants you.” His eyes soften, and he smiles. “He always has. But I guess it’s easier to say that out loud knowing I won’t even remember it.” 

Steve swallows around the lump in his throat, but can’t find any words to say to that. Bucky bumps Steve’s knee with his own, giving him another smirk. God, he looks young. 

“You look tired, Steve,” he says, almost voicing Steve’s own thoughts for him, and Steve marvels at the fact that he’s always had that power. “Do I look as rough as you in the future?” 

Steve smiles tightly. “Nah, you look good Buck. Always looked good.” Bucky bumps his knee again, and this time leaves it pressed there, reassuring him. Steve smiles a little more. “Grew your hair out down past your shoulders—it’s real pretty.” 

“You’re _shitting_ me, asshole!” Bucky says with a startled laugh, “I’d never—like a dame? Why the fuck?” 

“I’m serious, it looks good. Shiny. You use all kind of fancy stuff on it, just like you do now—like you thought we all wouldn’t notice when the rest of us looked like shit.” 

“I don’t believe a word,” Bucky says in mock offense, but eyes sparkling.

Then his smile fades back into something serious, and Steve braces himself. 

“Why are you here Steve? If you can’t change anything and I—I won’t remember?”

Steve considers his answer. It won’t do any good to tell Bucky what’s coming. He wants to say something instead to bring back that smile, the glint in his eyes. But he doesn’t have a lie in him either, not for Bucky. 

“I needed—I needed to catch you, Buck. Just once. To do what I promised and..and watch your six our here.” 

Bucky’s face goes pale, and his eyes very deliberately stay trained on Steve’s face instead of flicking to the doorway. 

“Well,” he says, voice strained. “You did. Does that help?” 

Steve shakes his head. “Not as much as I hoped.” 

Bucky’s jaw juts out mulishly, and he moves to stand, spinning to offer Steve his hand. Steve reaches for it automatically, their clasped hands a reverse image of his grip that prevented Bucky from falling. Steve clutches the sensation to himself, memorizing it. Bucky hauls him up to standing. 

“That’s because you’re talking to the wrong Bucky, idiot,” Bucky says, tone gentle in contrast to his words. He pulls Steve into a fierce, tight hug, and Steve closes his eyes, smelling Bucky’s old pomade and the damp wool of his coat as he buries his face in his shoulder. “I can keep telling you I forgive you, but I don’t even know what for. I’m gonna guess you’d believe it better from the one who does.”

Steve squeezes his eyes tight. “What if you’re wrong?” He whispers. 

“I’m not,” Bucky says, staunchly, pulling back from the embrace to glare at Steve. “What are you, chicken? Ask him.” He pushes lightly at Steve’s shoulder. “Ask him and see. I’ll bet you I’m right—and since you can’t come tell me, you’ll just have to live with the satisfaction of knowing this was a bet you lost all on your own. Promise me, Steve. Promise you’ll ask.”

Steve takes in a deep breath and nods. “I promise.” 

It’s easy enough. It’s a promise he’d already made to Peggy, when he’d told her he’d go back and figure out how to be happy. He just hadn’t realized the specifics before now. He _could_ be happy, he thinks. If Bucky is right. 

He takes another long look at Bucky’s young, handsome face, gazing at him seriously. Steve tips forward and hugs him again, and he feels a quick ghost of a kiss on his cheek before Bucky pushes him back. 

“Go on, Steve.”

Steve goes. 

***

As if he didn’t already hate everything about this miserable, fucked up planet thanks to what it’s done before—Steve is extremely irritated to find that he can’t just land himself where he needs to be. For whatever stupid reason the dumb rules around this goddamn stone seem to include the mountain climbing requirement. 

He trudges up and up the craggy rocks of the mountain path, barely etched into the side of the cliff but enough to know he’s headed the right direction. 

He’d been able to ask Clint just enough about what to expect that he isn’t surprised when it levels out onto a flat plane of intricately carved stone. He’s also not surprised when a dark figure rises in his periphery, a set of flowing, shifting black robes wafting around its feet. 

What Steve is _not_ prepared for is the face that looks at him from under the hood as it turns its gaze toward him. 

“I’ll take it this means we won, then.” 

“ _Natasha_ ,” Steve breathes, frozen in place with shock. 

Natasha gives him one of her small, close smiles, green eyes glinting. “Surprise,” she says, dryly. 

Steve staggers forward unthinking to pull her into an embrace. But his arms close on nothing, passing through the insubstantial darkness of her cloak. 

“No body, sorry,” she says, suddenly two paces in front of him again. “Part of this Keeper gig I guess.” 

“I brought the stone back—Nat, can we—”

“In a minute,” she says, stopping him. “First I wanna hear how you guys fucked up Thanos. Is—did Clint make it okay? What happened?” 

Steve’s heart thuds painfully. There’s so much to tell her, and so much he doesn’t want to recount. But she earned it. Of any of them she’s earned the whole story, and of course he’ll give it to her. 

They sit on a rock at the edge of the chasm. Or rather, Steve sits, and Natasha drifts beside him. 

He begins with all of them landing back on the platform—all of them but her. And even though it hurts, like prodding at a fresh, gaping wound, he gives her every detail he can muster. Right up through his delivery of the time stone to the Ancient One. Emotion passes over her face in turns, more expressive than she has normally let herself be before, even for him, as he tells her everything that happened to get here. 

“Oh Tony,” she says when he subsides into silence. “I wish it had been enough, that it was just me.” She bows her head. “You’ll tell Clint, won’t you? When you go back? That I—that I’m glad I won.” 

“I…I’ll tell him,” Steve says, slowly. “But—I brought the stone back. A soul for a soul, right?” 

Nat shakes her head, rising, and drifts to the edge of the cliff, looking down. “Not quite, Steve. I’m sorry.” 

“But—but why not, just trade it back, and you can come with me—I brought another time piece—”

“It’s just not how it works,” Nat says, voice eerily even. Her spy voice. “It’s not just the soul or the stone, it’s something you love.” She turns back to him, and her mouth curls again. “And you came alone.” 

“And if I…” Steve begins. Nat flashes forward so that she’s standing directly in front of him again, eyes fierce and angry. 

“Don’t even start, Steve. It’s not on the table. I’m not gonna watch anybody else I love pitching over this thing.” 

Steve clenches his jaw, wishing he could reach out and squeeze her shoulder. “Sounds like—” he clears his throat. “Sounds like you might be in the wrong business Romanov.” 

Nat laughs, darkly. “Yeah, well I didn’t exactly realize I was putting in a job application when I went over.” 

“We need you back, Nat.” Steve says, voice coming out stronger with the truth of it. “We need you.” 

Natasha shrugs incorporeal shoulders. “I don’t make the rules, I just have to keep them. The soul stone is different from the others—it would have found its way back here eventually. That’s why giving it back doesn’t reverse getting it in the first place.” Her mouth flattens into a straight line, and she repeats again as if by rote, “That which you love. That’s the price.” 

Steve stands, squaring his shoulders. It’s stupid. It’s a stupid rule and he hates it. He’d really hoped that it could be that easy—stone for Nat in reverse. 

But Steve is one of the great strategic minds of the last century. He didn’t come here without a back up plan—and he’s not leaving without her. 

It’s not exactly a promise he’d ever made to her in words, that she’d make it through—she’d never have let him get it out. But he feels like it’s one he made in his heart anyway, with their “see you soon” on the platform. And he’d promised _himself_ he’d get her back. 

Steve steps up to the edge of the cliff, and Natasha makes an aborted movement as if to stop him. He lifts a pacifying hand toward her. He’s just looking. Considering. 

It was a half-formed kind of idea, when he’d decided that he would be coming home with Natasha at the end of this trip one way or another. Now he wonders—is it enough? And is he really ready to do this if it is? There’s a tingling sensation of loss around the thought already, ready for him to pull the trigger. But there’s something like anticipation too. If it works.

“Okay,” he says. A small smile creeps over his face. “Then I have another question.” 

“What?” Natasha asks, voice dripping with wariness. 

“You think this goddamn stone has any sense of metaphor?”

***

“Get him the hell back!” Sam yells at Banner, who is punching furiously at the panels of the time machine. 

Bucky isn’t really listening. 

There’s a dull roar in his ears, and he jams his hands into the pocket of his jacket, turning his eyes to the lake. 

He wonders where Steve went, after he’d finished his final task. Because he’s positive Steve did what he was asked to do first—never one to let the team down. 

He wonders why Steve hadn’t told him—hadn’t let him say goodbye. Maybe it’s fair, Bucky thinks. Steve hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to him any of the times that came before either. 

Bucky lets the sound of Sam’s worry fade into white noise, and he casts his eyes along the shoreline. He should—he should do something, maybe. Reassure Sam and Banner. Think about what comes next—but _god_ he can’t even begin—

His eyes land on a figure, sitting on a bench at the edge of the lake with his back to Bucky. 

And Bucky’s heart catches in his throat—and then stops beating entirely. 

Because if it made any kind of sense at all to think it—he would swear he recognizes the slight set of those thin shoulders. 

“Sam,” Bucky says, too quietly at first to be heard. He clears his throat and tries again. “Sam!” 

Sam turns toward him, and Bucky points to the short figure on the bench. “You go,” he tells him. Sam gives him an odd look. And maybe it is odd, but Bucky can’t—he just needs a minute, if that’s who he thinks—how it could be—

Sam walks down to the man on the bench, and Bucky’s eyes follow him. Then they come to rest with laser focus that he hasn’t used since he stopped being a sniper on the flash of floppy gold hair, and familiar crooked nose that turns toward Sam. 

Bucky staggers a little in place, reaching out to brace himself against a tree. But he doesn’t drag his eyes away—doesn’t even blink. 

Steve darts a glance over his shoulder, and Bucky knows that he sees him there. Even if—even if _everything_ went back, his eyesight would still be good enough to see him hovering here. But he turns back to Sam, and Bucky can’t pay attention to what either of them are saying, even if he wanted to. 

It’s been a long while since Bucky felt like he had to mistrust his own mind. He’d lived in the sense of safety Shuri had given him for long enough before Thanos that he’d gotten used to not having to doubt himself. 

But Steve is here. Steve’s here and he’s—he looks like the boy Bucky fell in love with over a hundred years ago. And yet he isn’t that boy either, Bucky can see if he looks closely, that Steve still has the fine lines around his eyes and mouth that he’d earned over five years of striving and grieving. Bucky closes his eyes, breathing deeply and trying not to panic. His eyes don’t lie to him anymore. If Steve is here, like this, then…then Steve is _here like this_.

Bucky opens his eyes again, and he sees how Steve’s slender hands tremble as he lifts the shield and places it in Sam’s hands. He sees Sam look away, face turning from Steve to hide how he is overcome. But Bucky can see it. 

Steve stands up, and angles his body toward Bucky, and Bucky—drawn as always like a moth to a candle—takes a halting step toward them. 

“Sam,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear clearly now that his face is turned his direction. “Would you go on up to the Tower? Take Bruce. There’s—there’s somebody waiting for a debrief. And I think she’d like to see you both.” 

Sam looks up, startled, and his hand flies to Steve’s shoulder. “It isn’t—Steve, did you? She’s—?” 

Steve nods, grinning. “I thought you guys could take her to tell Barton in person. Seems better than a phone call.” 

“We aren’t done here Cap,” Sam says, face breaking out into a sunny grin as he tightens the shield on his arm, already bouncing on his feet to go to Natasha. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Sam.” Steve says. “I’ll see you guys when you get back.” 

Sam gives a sharp salute, and then takes off running back toward the edge of the woods, already yelling to Banner. 

Steve turns slowly on the spot so that he’s facing Bucky now, and his frail shoulders hunch in a little as he sticks his hands in his pockets. 

Bucky forces his feet to step forward, toward Steve, even though every moment feels like he’s about to step out of whatever dream he’d accidentally walked into. And he thinks it might be a good dream. One he’d like to live in a little. 

Steve looks up at him as Bucky reaches his side, and his mouth does a funny twist. 

“Haven’t looked up at you like this in a little bit of time, huh?” 

Bucky tries something that doesn’t end up feeling as much like a smile as he’d intended. 

“No I guess it’s been—” he tries to remember how many years in his head, but then he shakes it. He doesn’t care about that and he doesn’t have it in him to banter like this doesn’t mean something—mean _everything_. “Steve are you—is this for keeps? Are you really staying like this?” 

Steve nods, looking up at Bucky from under his long lashes. And _oh_ Bucky forgot what that look did to him. He’s loved Steve for so long in so many forms but this—this strikes him in a deep place he had forgotten he had inside him. His knees feel a little wobbly, so Bucky sits heavily on the bench to preempt collapsing entirely. 

Steve sits beside him, more carefully, a little apart from him. Bucky raises his hand and reaches for him, then pulls it back. But he can’t help himself. He lifts it again, ignores that it’s trembling, and asks, “Can I?” 

Steve gives him a very soft smile, and tips his face up toward Bucky’s outstretched fingers. “Sure Buck. Whatever you want.” 

Bucky traces the lines of Steve’s face delicately. And although he looks like something out of Bucky’s closest held memories and dreams, his skin is warm and _real_ under Bucky’s fingertips. Bucky clenches his jaw as tight as he can, willing his eyes to stop blurring. 

Steve reaches up and grabs Bucky’s hand between both of his, pressing solid bone and muscle against him. A sound that’s a little like a sob escapes Bucky despite his best efforts. 

“I’m here, Buck, I’m really me. I’m just not—not Captain America anymore.” 

Bucky lets out a disbelieving breath through his nose. “You think that serum is what made Steve Rogers Captain America?” 

Steve ducks his head and shrugs. “Well, the soul stone and Vormir thought so—and that’s what mattered.” 

“You—you traded it, for Romanov?” 

Steve looks up again, bright blue gaze steady. “Yeah. It was time and—and a good reason.”

Bucky swallows thickly, nodding. 

“And a few people convinced me, along the way.” Steve adds. 

“Who?” Bucky asks, just above a whisper. 

“Erskine, Peggy…you.” 

Bucky’s jaw twitches. “Me?” 

“I went and—and stopped you falling. From the train.” Steve says, and now he looks away, out over the water, like it’s hard for him to say it with Bucky’s eyes on him. He lifts a thin shoulder again in a shrug. “I couldn’t actually change it for you but I—I wanted to see you. What it would’ve been like if that minute had gone different for us.” 

“And I—I had good stuff to say?” Bucky asks, the surreality of the question briefly flustering him. 

“You’ve always been the best guy I know, Buck,” Steve says quietly. Then he sets his shoulders, and returns his gaze to Bucky, and his look is resolute and intent. The look he’s always had right before throwing a punch, actually, and Bucky has just a spare second to wonder if Steve is about to take a swing at him but—

“I love you, Bucky. I always did. And I want to be near you wherever you want to go next, if you want to let me,” Steve says, words tumbling over each other in his determination to get them out. He pauses. “I promised you—past you—that I’d tell you that when I got back here, and stop being so afraid of you hearing it. And if—if it’s different for you now, if it’s been too much these last—”

Bucky doesn’t let him finish. As soon as it filters through his brain what Steve is _saying_ he doesn’t hesitate. He hauls Steve into his chest, wrapping his arms around him so tight Steve’s lungs press out the air in themselves in a whoosh against Bucky’s neck. But then Steve’s arms are going around his neck and Steve, _his Steve_ is pulling back just far enough to kiss him. It’s too desperate to be a very good kiss objectively, but Bucky doesn’t care. He kisses Steve back just as desperately for several heartbeats. 

“Yes,” Bucky says as soon as he pulls back, cradling Steve’s blonde head in one hand. Steve looks back at him, wide-eyed, like he’d expected this to go differently. What a laugh—it’s all he’s been wanting to hear since they were seventeen. But Steve always was an idiot. _His_ idiot though. He wonders what past Bucky said that finally made this happen, and why the hell he hadn’t done it sooner if he’d had it in him. “Anywhere, anything, whatever you want, Steve—”

“ _Oh_ ” Steve says on an exhale like he’s been punched. He falls forward against Bucky’s chest, wrapping his slender hands in Bucky’s leather jacket and pulling him down so that their foreheads are rested against each other. 

“You were right,” Steve says, a smile spreading over his face. 

“I was? When?” 

“When I went—you bet me that you still—I didn’t believe him, but he made me promise I’d ask.” 

Bucky smiles now too, feeling like a mask of sorrow and weariness that he’s been wearing is cracking and falling from his face with the expression. “Smart guy, I always thought.” 

Steve snorts and shoves at Bucky’s chest, though not enough to actually push him away. “Yeah I thought you thought that.” 

Bucky pulls back to look at him better, drinking him in and cataloguing all the familiar details of his face—and all the new, unfamiliar ones too. The creases of care and worry that weren’t there the last time Bucky saw him like this. When they’d said goodbye at the Stark Expo—neither one of them could have known everything that they were bidding farewell to that night. 

And Bucky searches Steve’s face now, wondering if once again Steve has hurled himself into a decision he didn’t really understand. What it will be like for Steve, after all this time to be weak again, sick again, small again. But Steve stares back, accepting the scrutiny as if he knows what Bucky is asking. And even if it is hard—Bucky will be there for him, and he won’t be forced to leave this time. Steve won’t be on his own. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, and an edge of worry creeps in even amidst the happiness. Happiness is a feeling Bucky Barnes hasn’t been able to trust in a long time. “You mean it, what you said to Sam? You aren’t going anywhere again?” 

Steve gives Bucky his best, determined Captain America expression, and Bucky loves it. On these features, Steve’s handsome but delicate face, his eyes big and luminous, he _loves_ that look. 

And he trusts it in a way he’s never trusted anything else in his long life, the look of pure determination on Steve’s face as he says, 

“Not without you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was maybe as cathartic for you to read as it was for me to write, let me know--I love your comments! 
> 
> This fic is dedicated to those three seconds I, and many of us, thought that was small Steve sitting on the bench. Also to calendulae for her fast betaing as always! 
> 
> Also come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/odetteandodile)!! Love meeting people over there too :)


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